Hi all,
I am a new member and I am a hokkien. However, I do not know hokkien,but i want to learn it although my dad is not very enthu about that.
I have tried looking for websites teaching hokkien using mandarin or english but I have so far found very very very few. All of them teach Taiwanese and not hokkien(there is difference between taiwanese and hokkien spoken in singapore). I want to learn hokkien spoken in malysia and singapore. Hope you all can recommend some website or courses. Some places in singapore teach cantonese,hainanese and teochew but none seems to teach hokkien which i think is super weird since it is the biggest dialect group in singapore.
Hope you all can help in my quest to learn hokkien.
new
Welcome
Hi Alan,
Welcome to the Forum. Nice to see some new people here.
I'm afraid I can't help you really. I grew up in Penang, and speak a little Hokkien, but not very well - I have a very limited vocabulary, and I can't read Chinese characters.
I have a similar problem to yours, in the sense that there is no *formal* way of improving my (Malaysian/Singaporean) Hokkien. As you say, most of the formal courses are for the Taiwanese variant. I suppose one of the solutions would be to find a fluent native speaker in Singapore, and get him or her to teach you.
My own solution has been to accept (for myself) that there will be no realistic way for me to improve my Penang Hokkien. Instead, I see myself as trying first to learn Mandarin and Chinese characters, and then eventually (probably in about 10 years, at the rate I'm going!), learning Taiwanese. At the moment, I've started beginner's Mandarin.
For someone wanting to learn the Hokkien language, Taiwanese has the advantages that: 1) It will automatically have more speakers than the Malaysian/Singaporean variety. 2) There are formal materials and courses. 3) It won't be full of English and Malay borrowings [As a non-prescriptive linguist, I have no *moral objection* to English and Malay borrowings - indeed, I *like* them, because they add local colour, but they are simply not comprehensible to people outside of Malaysia/Singapore, and there is no way of rendering them in characters.]
Once I have learned Taiwanese, I can (hopefully) easily adapt that to Malaysian/Singaporean conditions, and substitute the appropriate Malay and English words.
So, my biggest barrier to learning Taiwanese (i.e. enrolling for a 2-month course, and *going* to Taiwan, and sitting down every day in a class, and memorizing vocabulary in the evenings), is that almost all such courses will be taught in characters and/or pre-suppose a knowledge of spoken Mandarin. That's why I've set myself a 10-year goal of first learning Mandarin and characters.
If you already read characters and/or can speak Mandarin, you're already miles ahead of me.
Anyway, just to welcome you to the Forum, and share my ideas with you on this topic. I used to be a very regular poster here, but stopped about a year ago, when the Forum first introduced registration. I couldn't remember my old password, and the password-reset didn't seem to mail any of my email addresses, so I've re-registered under a slightly different name, and intend to post regularly again.
Sim.
P.S. Hi to all the old Minnan Forum friends, particularly Aurelio and Niuc. "It's nice to be back"
Welcome to the Forum. Nice to see some new people here.
I'm afraid I can't help you really. I grew up in Penang, and speak a little Hokkien, but not very well - I have a very limited vocabulary, and I can't read Chinese characters.
I have a similar problem to yours, in the sense that there is no *formal* way of improving my (Malaysian/Singaporean) Hokkien. As you say, most of the formal courses are for the Taiwanese variant. I suppose one of the solutions would be to find a fluent native speaker in Singapore, and get him or her to teach you.
My own solution has been to accept (for myself) that there will be no realistic way for me to improve my Penang Hokkien. Instead, I see myself as trying first to learn Mandarin and Chinese characters, and then eventually (probably in about 10 years, at the rate I'm going!), learning Taiwanese. At the moment, I've started beginner's Mandarin.
For someone wanting to learn the Hokkien language, Taiwanese has the advantages that: 1) It will automatically have more speakers than the Malaysian/Singaporean variety. 2) There are formal materials and courses. 3) It won't be full of English and Malay borrowings [As a non-prescriptive linguist, I have no *moral objection* to English and Malay borrowings - indeed, I *like* them, because they add local colour, but they are simply not comprehensible to people outside of Malaysia/Singapore, and there is no way of rendering them in characters.]
Once I have learned Taiwanese, I can (hopefully) easily adapt that to Malaysian/Singaporean conditions, and substitute the appropriate Malay and English words.
So, my biggest barrier to learning Taiwanese (i.e. enrolling for a 2-month course, and *going* to Taiwan, and sitting down every day in a class, and memorizing vocabulary in the evenings), is that almost all such courses will be taught in characters and/or pre-suppose a knowledge of spoken Mandarin. That's why I've set myself a 10-year goal of first learning Mandarin and characters.
If you already read characters and/or can speak Mandarin, you're already miles ahead of me.
Anyway, just to welcome you to the Forum, and share my ideas with you on this topic. I used to be a very regular poster here, but stopped about a year ago, when the Forum first introduced registration. I couldn't remember my old password, and the password-reset didn't seem to mail any of my email addresses, so I've re-registered under a slightly different name, and intend to post regularly again.
Sim.
P.S. Hi to all the old Minnan Forum friends, particularly Aurelio and Niuc. "It's nice to be back"